


The Tales Children Tell (Or, The Story of the Eorzean Skeleton War)

by Livvy



Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Ala Mhigo (Final Fantasy XIV), Childhood Memories, Emotionally Repressed Ala Mhigans, Father-Daughter Relationship, Gridania (Final Fantasy XIV), Storytelling, Zombies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-20
Updated: 2015-12-20
Packaged: 2021-03-07 21:35:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,647
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26764432
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Livvy/pseuds/Livvy
Summary: One year before Ala Mhigo's fall, a Riskbreaker discovers a place in East End where the dead do not rest in peace. Twenty years later, his successor recalls the tale.





	The Tales Children Tell (Or, The Story of the Eorzean Skeleton War)

* * *

Grand Steward Ashelia Riot combed over her bar after the guests had gone, discarding forgotten candy wrappers and sweeping up stray crumbs after a thoroughly successful All Saints’ Wake storytelling night. She had hardly been expecting a full house, but all the seats she’d laid out had been occupied with listeners for hours on end and she had feared more than once that they might not have enough food to go around.

She had even managed to join in on the storytelling at the last minute. It had been no simple process - it had taken her days to remember any tale at all, and she had been obligated to fill in gaps in the story from imagination rather than memory - but the crowd had seemed to enjoy it all the same.

How strange, she thought as she slipped into bed at last, that _that_ particular tale had been the one to come to mind after so long.

* * *

He had already changed her into pajamas, tucked her in, given her a kiss goodnight. Montblanc, his greying spaniel, was settled at the foot of her bed, sleepily keeping watch over his young charge as he did most nights. Tia awaited him in the kitchen, he knew, doubtless as eager as he was to discuss everything he’d missed over the past few days. Yet his business here was not concluded. Ashelia continued to sit perfectly upright under her blankets, watching him without the faintest intentions of sleep in her wide violet eyes.

“Tell me a story, Daddy?”

 _A story._ So long had he been conscious that he could barely wrap his thoughts around a single sentence, let alone an entire narrative thread. Surrounded as he now was by the safety and surety of home, his fatigue had at last begun to gain the upper hand. But he knew why Ashelia asked for what she did, and he could not but oblige her.

He heaved a deep sigh, wincing as the exhalation became a yawn halfway through. “Right, then,” he asked, giving his head a shake to reorient himself. “What sort of story will it be?”

“A scary one!”

Every remotely frightening tale he had ever been told promptly vanished from his mind. “…A scary story, just before bed? Are you quite sure?”

“Mhm!”

“Well. If you insist…” Another sigh, another yawn. This was the very least he could do for her after having been gone so long without even a word of forewarning. Yet he could think of no story that would do justice to her request. None, save…

“Once upon a time, a very long time ago,” he began, his voice falling to a murmur, “there was a man. A young man.”

* * *

“…A Midlander,” she said to her assembled guests, “because only a Midlander would be stupid enough to do the things described in this story.” She allowed a moment of pause for some assorted chuckles to spread through the crowd, but her eyes fixed solely on one individual seated in the front row. A Gridanian, a lancer, and perhaps the biggest skeptic she had ever met. “Let’s call him… Ivaan.”

Ivaan Arkwright raised a single finger, opening his mouth to protest, then sat back in his chair with a huff and a scowl.

* * *

“It was All Saints’ Wake, the night of the gods’ great feast up in the heavens. Every year the gods invite their favored, the saints, up into heaven with them to join in the celebrations.”

“That was last night.”

“Yes, it was. Do you remember what the tales say happens while the saints are away?”

“The dark ones come to play!”

“That’s right. With both the saints and the gods up in heaven, all sorts of evil abounds here on Hydaelyn for one night.”

“Voidsent?”

“Not only voidsent, but oftentimes the undead as well. And it’s long been said that the undead dwell far to the west, at the site of an old battlefield where Gyr Abania borders the Black Shroud. A place where many, Ala Mhigans and Gridanians both, fought and died in the Autumn War.”

* * *

He found his target drowned at a bend in the Velodyna River, weighed down in the roaring current by her many skirts and jewels. No indication remained of what might have prompted the noblewoman to attempt swimming across, whether it was a foolhardy confidence in her survival instincts or a single-minded desperation to flee the tyranny of her distant cousin Theodoric at any cost. On every line of her swollen face was etched a look of terror: a choked, silent scream that echoed into and beyond her final living moments.

At any rate, his mission was done, and with little obligation on his part. The forest efts would make short work of the body far better than he could.

He stood from where he had been kneeling in the riverbed, surveying his surroundings one last time. A break in the trees revealed an array of stars spread far above him, with a sliver of moonlight to match. A perfect All Saints’ evening. Assuming he kept a decent pace from here onward, he would be home before Ashelia awoke the following morning.

He had not taken more than three steps to the east when the winds began to change.

Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed a flicker of light.

* * *

She was more than pleased to have captivated the attention of her entire audience. Her Midlander friend continued to sulk in the front row, but even he sat in thoughtful silence as the story of Ivaan began to unfold.

“Just as the moon is nearing its full height, he feels the winds shift and pick up - a breeze at first, then a deafening gale. And then, just as suddenly… it goes still. No sooner does he blink than two entire armies appear before his very eyes, ghostly pale in the starlight.”

A few pairs of eyebrows raised. Someone - most likely a Lalafell - let out a startled squeak.

“He sees bodies in shambles,” she continued, leaning slightly over the lectern, overtly reveling in their shock. “Strips of rotted flesh and meat only barely tucked into armor. Corpses bloated with river water, pecked at by countless yarzon over the years. Others still were naught but bone, clutching weapons fast in their skeletal fists. But they fought, and oh, how they _bled_!”

She couldn’t keep from smirking at the looks on all their faces. This was simply too easy.

* * *

He paused, suddenly realizing that he had no idea what on earth his daughter might be thinking of this ghastly tale. “…You’re alright?” he posed.

Ashelia blinked once, then began to nod vigorously.

“If you’re too scared, we can-”

“No! Keep going! What happened then? What did he do then?”

“Well, he…” He didn’t know whether or not he should be concerned that he was racking his brains over so simple a question. “He did the only sensible thing, of course. He ran.”

* * *

Ashley had seen his share of undead during his time as a Riskbreaker. He had fought off more worm-ridden revenants of the city catacombs than he could begin to count, and several times had he met a mage so steeped in void magicks that not even death had given an end to their chanting. Yet never had he encountered anything like this. The bodies here wore armor from the decades-past Autumn War, when they yet wore armor at all. He could make out retired Ala Mhigan sigils upon many of the skeletal fighters, and here and there he even spotted the claw symbol used among the Fist of Rhalgr since long before the order had officially been inducted into the royal army. These corpses moved like the men they had once been, their footwork and swordplay and stances as swift as any living soldiers’.

And what was more, they bled like living men. Every swipe of a sword, every thrust of a pike, every punch and kick and jab brought forth from thin air a spray of blood that shone dark and heavy in the light of the moon. Yet queerly, he heard not a one of them scream.

Most of the soldiers took no notice of him, while others cast a glance or two in his direction before returning to targets more suited to their interests. Yet some chose to follow him, brandishing their weapons with a clear intent to kill. Within seconds he was overtaken by a half dozen undead, each bearing a different sigil on their decaying person. He drew his shortsword from its sheath, hacking at as many as he could and fending off the rest with the hide buckler on his left arm.

He had to leave immediately. He had not come to the Shroud for this, was not prepared in any way for what he was now seeing. He would return to the capital, give a detailed account of his mission to Grand Steward Atkascha or to any other informations analyst he found, and forget he had seen anything until given a direct order to the contrary. With this strategy in mind, he parried a blow from his nearest attacker - a swordswoman with half her face rotted away - and broke for the east at once.

His progress was impeded as a skeletal hand burst from the ground, grasping his shin with such force that he stumbled and fell.

“Make peace!” came a voice very near to him, and the pressure around his leg vanished. He cast about for his bearings, for any hint of what had just come to pass, until he noticed a thin figure lying near his side, its single decomposing arm outstretched toward him. “You must make peace!”

* * *

“‘Which side were you on?’ Ivaan asks. The corpse replied, 'Does it matter now?’”

* * *

From what he could see of her robes, she had been a Gridanian Hearer in life. Few of her facial features remained to her, lost long ago either through butchery or decomposition, but something about her ravaged appearance called to mind the visage of a Duskwight Elezen. She spoke with an intensity that startled him, her frenetic words ringing through his mind rather than his ears. Perhaps she had had the Echo as well. Perhaps she still did.

“It was my doing,” she admitted before he could even draw his sword. “All this. When we learned Vainchelon had fallen ill, that he would not survive the week, our defeat was all but certain. We… I had to do something, and so I begged-”

“You begged for the war to drag on.”

The Hearer nodded.

“The Autumn War ended over eighty years ago,” he pointed out.

A whisper, an agonized moan. “Eighty years…”

* * *

“So what did he do?” Ashelia asked, her voice very quiet. “Did he help them?”

He had not wanted to, he remembered that much. But in the grand scheme of events, that detail had been almost entirely irrelevant.

“He did,” he said.

His daughter’s face lit up in an approving smile.

* * *

“The spell I cast,” the Hearer continued, “ensured that all who walked this battlefield on that fateful All Saints’ Wake would remain here - until Gridania’s victory was decided, I thought. But in my heart, what I truly longed for was an end to the conflict. For the forest I loved to be at peace once more. The spell sapped my mortal strength, and I breathed my last believing that I had died with purpose. And yet…”

To ridicule or admonish her would be purposeless. This woman - a young woman, he realized, little more than a girl when she had thought to sacrifice her life for her homeland - knew all too well that she carried responsibility for the grim reincarnation happening here. She and she alone had brought about the prolonged suffering of countless war-torn souls, most of them by now mad with bloodlust, and the grief of that understanding was clear on her ruined face.

“I have seen others - living women and men - journey to the Finesand Banks on this night of the year. They, too, have been held captive by the fruits of my recklessness. Each of them, down to the very last, sentenced to suffer and bleed over and over again for a battle in which they did not take part.” She regarded him at length through empty sockets, and when next she spoke, the Echo fully conveyed the desperation in her thoughts. “They can none of them speak, though they can fight and run and act as mortal men. You are the first person to hear me for… for…” _Eighty years._ “Please. I could not bear for you meet this fate as well.”

“What must I do?”

* * *

“You must find the lance of Vainchelon and the cesti of Gylbarde, and bury them both at the very edge of the East End,” Ashe intoned, contorting her voice into something low and menacing. “Then and only then will the curse be lifted.”

Yet as she drew out a pause for dramatic effect, one of the noisier guests in the back row piped up, “Who?”

“Vainchelon and Gylbarde,” she explained, not without some annoyance, “were the two generals at the Battle of the Finesand Banks. Vainchelon was a lancer, the commander of Gridania’s armies at the time. Gylbarde was a monk of the Fist of Rhalgr-” She broke off to chuckle as Sylvan pumped her fist in the air in solidarity. “-the man who first brought the Fist to political prominence, in fact! Strong, capable leaders both, each with a fierce grudge against the other and his country.”

* * *

He bid the Hearer a terse farewell and pressed on. It felt good, he realized then, to pursue a goal once more - a ludicrous goal amidst an utterly nonsensical turn of events, but a goal all the same. Besides, he had committed himself to far stranger things throughout his career than burying the proverbial hatchets of two mortal foes.

If these strange skeletal armies operated in any manner similar to living ones - and Ashley’s limited but intimate experience with these undead led him to believe that they very much did - then neither Vainchelon nor Gylbarde would prove particularly difficult to find. It stood to reason that as representatives of their respective nations, both commanders would be bogged down by ceremony and retinues and all of the things that came with official military leadership. Assuming neither man had been prone to forsaking his duties throughout his mortal existence, Ashley would not need to throw himself into the heart of the battle to find either of them. He would start by skirting around the fighting along the Finesand Banks and infiltrating each party’s base camp.

The majority of his knowledge of the Autumn War came from his wife’s extensive collection of history texts. Tia had always had a personal interest in the topic, she had told him once, as her and her sister’s surname - Malheur - had belonged to two Gridanian soldiers who had defected to Ala Mhigo sometime after Vainchelon’s death. “Unhappiness” or “misfortune” in the old Gridanian tongue, taken as a name after they had witnessed the rest of their platoon fall due to a commander’s arrogance. Grimly Ashley wondered if they were not here even now, their souls bound inextricably to the land they had sworn to leave behind.

At first he crept through the trees at half a crawl, wary of any archers who might be patrolling the battle from afar. Yet he never saw more than two in any given area, and they were so intent upon the battle raging in the near distance that they paid no heed to their own surroundings. This surprised him until he recalled that the bards for which Gridania’s armies were known had only been formally established during the latter half of the Autumn War, well after the Battle at the Finesand Banks, when not only Gridania but Ishgard, Ul'dah, and even Limsa Lominsa had fought together to curb the expansion of Ala Mhigan conquest. He racked his memory for any facts that might prove crucial to his objective, quickening his pace into a run as he entered what had once been the site of the Gridanian encampment.

It was there that he encountered one of the strangest sights he had seen since the beginning of his mission the day prior. A large party of medics and healers swarmed about a neat row of tents, every one of them as dead as their comrades-in-arms, conjuring restorative magicks to heal festered wounds and tend to rotting flesh. Yet these spells, far from curing their patients, appeared to have an adverse effect when they had any effect at all; the summoned aether seemed only to sap the corpses’ strength all the more, until the healers and the wounded were caught in a horrendous and very silent cycle of suffering and futility.

Along a far wall of the smallest medical tent stood a formidable assembly of undead, garbed to a man in Gridanian robes. Intuition prompted Ashley forward, until he was so close to the crowd of attendants that he might have tapped any of them on the shoulder. Lying prone on the sickbed directly before them was the emaciated figure of a Wildwood Elezen, tossing about in the agonizing throes of fever. He appeared horribly emaciated, though most of his stomach was rotted away; occasionally he would turn his head enough to give a sputtering cough, sending a shower of insects and filth onto his pristine white bedding. This, then, was Vainchelon, the commander taken by illness before the Battle of the Finesand Banks had met its end. Leaning against one side of his bed lay a lance, fallen from its owner’s tenuous grip. Moving slowly so as not to suddenly startle the undead in his vicinity, Ashley stepped closer, knelt to the floor of the tent, and took up the spear in his own hand.

Vainchelon’s dull eyes shot open at once.

* * *

“Suddenly… he reached out and tore the hero in two!” He started from his seat and grabbed his daughter around the middle, tickling her ruthlessly as she laughed and squealed with surprise. Montblanc at once stood from his spot at Ashelia’s feet, giving a few protective barks to show that he would not stand for the girl being victimized.

Ashley sat down once more, grinning more to himself than even to her, but Ashelia was already demanding that he continue the story. “But what _really_ happened then? He didn’t _really_ get caught and torn up.”

“No,” he admitted. Montblanc settled down again, curling himself against Ashelia with an indignant huff. “He turned and ran from the Gridanian camp as fast as he could, the spear still held in his hand.”

“Did they follow him?”

“They did, and they were fast. He was very afraid.”

* * *

He was not so foolish as to think he had evaded his pursuers for good, even as he retreated deeper and deeper into the underbrush along the Velodyna. For minutes he heard nothing at all save the whispers of trees in the faint autumn wind and his own heartbeat pounding in his head, but he refused to give himself over to complacency. Doubtless the east would prove his best chance of a permanent escape, as it would allow him to slip behind Ala Mhigan lines and beyond the reach of Vainchelon’s attendants for good.

Upon gradually slowing his pace to regain his breath, he was at last alerted to the footsteps he had been expecting since his flight from the Gridanian camp. Yet these sounds came from the east, he soon realized, not from where he had come in the west. They echoed off the trees strangely, irregularly, as though the walker were staggering under a very heavy burden.

The steps came closer, and he could detect a slosh and splatter of river water keeping time with the approaching individual’s stride. It was the noblewoman whom he had been tasked with hunting down throughout the previous day, the very same whom he had seen lying dead in the Velodyna only hours before. Her skirts and fur overcoat were sodden and heavy; copious amounts of water poured from her clothes and body with every step she took, creating a muddy trail behind her as she moved. Yet move she did, ostensibly bent on her westward destination, still as determined to flee the king’s justice as she had been in life. Ashley knew his target far better than to believe she would prove any threat to him, especially in her current condition. Fighting to regulate his quickening pulse once more, he turned from the wretched sight before him and pressed on.

As he ran, breaks in the canopy overhead provided him with several brief glimpses of the night sky. Judging by the position of a few familiar constellations, he placed the time at no earlier than several hours past midnight. Inwardly he cursed himself; he had spent far too long sneaking through the forest, had forgotten what the Hearer had said was at stake if he failed to end the enchantment before dawn. The soldiers here, undead or no, troubled him no more than they would have if they had been living men. His greatest obstacle, for the time being, was time itself. He had no more than three hours until day broke again, and he could but pray that that would be enough.

He passed the battlefront at a distance, the clash of wood and steel only barely audible from the path he trod. The relative quiet rang in his ears even over the steady rhythm of his own running pace. At last he laid eyes on a string of prayer flags, the sort one might find in a temple to Rhalgr or on the highest peaks of Gyr Abania, and he knew he had to be close.

Unlike the tents at the Gridanian base, which had been uniform shades of yellow or tan or white, the soldiers of Ala Mhigo had not adhered to a single color palette in their preparations for war. Hides of brown and gray and black stretched as far as the eye could see, interspersed with violet and indigo silks or cloths of deep crimson muslin. The only regularity throughout the entire array was the griffin standard, as familiar to Ashley in that eighty-year-old graveyard as it was on the capital streets of his homeland. Yet he knew far better than to allow himself to relax at the sight. This was not his homeland, and the men who walked here were not his kin.

Though at first pleasing to the eye, the disorderly sprawl of tents proved remarkably difficult to traverse. A painstaking sweep of the camp’s northern half took him the better part of an hour, and it revealed no spaces that might have belonged to a military leader. He even scoured the medical wards, the makeshift smithies, the council pavilions, only to find them vacant of the one person he truly needed to find.

The sky was fast growing lighter. More and more stars were blinking out with each passing minute, and the black of night was fast giving way to a faint purple pre-dawn to the east. Upon reaching the southeastern end of the Ala Mhigan camp and coming no closer to finding anything of worth, Ashley stood still for the first time that night. He threw back his head to the sky and closed his eyes, letting the reality of his desperate predicament overcome him.

He had had no reason to suspect the Hearer he had spoken with of harboring any ulterior motives, yet there was to be no telling now if she had been truthful in her account of the spell she had cast. He had simply assumed her claim that he would remain trapped in the Finesand Banks if the enchantment were permitted to continue after sunrise, even with no evidence to support or refute that statement. It would not, he supposed, be out of the question for a frightened young mage trapped between life and death to try and convince the first skilled warrior who passed by that failing to aid her before dawn would bring about his own demise.

Yet she had spoken to him with the Echo, and though he had known the Echo to do many things, it had never once told him a lie.

Ashley could not push the Hearer’s terrified gaze from his mind’s eye; of all the things he had seen that night, he had no doubt that that ravaged face would haunt him above all else.

There was nothing more he could do so close to dawn. He would stow Vainchelon’s lance where only he could retrieve it, return to the capital to apprise the Grand Steward of all he had seen, and he would pray in so doing that he was not condemning his soul to an eternity of thralldom.

He left the encampment at a walk, no longer giving much thought to stealth or speed. Though he knew he had seen wonders and horrors in equal measure tonight, he wished he could bring himself to care for any of it.

His eastward path emerged into a small clearing, and he took several steps forward before realizing that the grove was already occupied. A lone figure knelt with his back to Ashley in meditation before the eastern horizon, though this gesture of piety was somewhat ruined by the flask he held in his hand.

On the tree stump behind him, apparently forgotten, lay two well-worn cesti.

* * *

“With both weapons at last in hand, Ivaan runs directly east toward the brightening horizon. And all the while, the atrophied armies of the dead pursue him, running at his heels like baying hounds.” She couldn’t believe she was managing to hold the crowd’s attention. Aside from a pair of voices in the back eagerly discussing food, she had the eyes of everyone in the room, even the Midlander whose name she had so gleefully borrowed. “At the forefront of the charge are those whose weapons he has unceremoniously stolen, none other than Vainchelon and Gylbarde themselves.”

* * *

He expected some sort of chase and was faintly surprised when he did not receive one. Yet his life was at stake nonetheless, and from an insurmountable enemy at that. He ran with all the haste he could muster, gripping both of Gylbarde’s cesti in his right hand and Vainchelon’s lance in his left. He ran and ran until he reached the very edge of the Shroud, then threw himself to the earth and began scrabbling with his bare hands, digging a shallow trench for the two weapons to be buried in.

Time seemed to accelerate as he knelt there, until a pinkish glow came over the sky and the sun threatened with each passing minute to rise. Somehow the hole he dug never seemed long enough for the spear or deep enough for the cesti, until at last he was shoving loose soil back over the space he had made the ground, packing it all back into place with successive blows of his fists.

As the last clod of earth fell from his hands, he saw two figures materialize at the very edge of the trees, as whole and as vibrant as they had been in the primes of their lives.

The generals nodded, once to Ashley and once to each other. Then, dissolving into a light sheen of aether, they were gone.

He breathed out a sigh he had not known he had been holding and turned to the east, but not before he heard a faint voice on the edge of his mind whisper, “ _Thank you._ ”

* * *

Ashelia sat silent, her eyes wider than ever. For several moments, the only part of her that moved was the hand running over Montblanc’s thick fur. Then she whispered something he could not hear.

“What was that?”

“Snowflies,” she said, barely louder than before. “They must have turned to snowflies.”

Ashley considered this, was amazed to realize that she could very well be right. In truth, he had no idea what had become of Vainchelon and Gylbarde at the end, only that he knew he had indeed seen both men at peace. “Perhaps they did,” he replied, then, stifling yet another yawn, “What do you think? Was that a good story?”

“Mhm!”

“Not too scary?”

She began shaking her head at once.

“Good.” He leaned in, tucking an unruly red curl behind her ear before giving her a final goodnight kiss on her forehead. “Now get some sleep. I’ll still be here when you wake up.”

“Night, Daddy!”

“Goodnight, dear. I love you.”

“Love you too.”

He gave Montblanc a pat on the head and stood, crossing Ashelia’s small bedroom in only a few strides. He left her door only slightly ajar, just as she liked it, and went into the kitchen to speak with his wife.

_You’ll never believe what happened to me, Tia darling. I saw the Battle of the Finesand Banks with my own two eyes and laid its generals to rest after eighty years._

“I’m sorry I returned so late,” he said, moving to the washtub to help with dishes. “Originally I was meant to be released from duty well before lunchtime.”

“Atkascha held you up?”

“Naturally.”

“What _were_ you telling her in there?” asked Alma, who was curled up with a book on a nearby sofa and whom Ashley had not noticed until then. “I could only catch bits and pieces, but it all sounded rather violent.”

“Old ghost story,” he explained, accepting from Tia a thoroughly scrubbed pan to be dried. “I realized halfway through that I’d forgotten how it went. Had to make most of it up.”

“She’ll be fine,” Tia assured her sister. “She’s heard far worse.” Alma shrugged and returned to her book. Tia leaned in to give him a kiss on the cheek, as her hands and arms were still soapy with dishwater. “Nothing to report. A quiet couple of days, in all. Boris stopped by looking for you earlier this afternoon, but he said it was nothing pressing.”

“Well, the good news is that unless there’s a sudden national crisis, I’m officially on leave for the next week.”

“Which means I’m to expect a sudden national crisis tomorrow.” Although it would not have been the first time his period of leave had been interrupted by some confidential state emergency, there was no bitterness in Tia’s quip; indeed, when Ashley glanced over to study her face, she was grinning with mirth. He grinned back, nudging her playfully with his elbow, but just as he opened his mouth to give a retort, he heard a creaking of floorboards and a soft succession of footsteps.

There Ashelia stood in the kitchen, holding the hem of her lacy blue nightgown away from her bare feet.

“Daddy, I’m not going to have nightmares.”

He exchanged a glance with Tia, who was trying very hard to keep a straight face. Utterly at a loss for what else to say, he replied, “…That’s good, Ashe. Go back to bed.”

“But if I do, it’ll be your fault.”

Before he could so much as begin to protest to this, she turned and scampered back into her bedroom.

* * *

“You are quite a master storyteller yourself, Riot!” exclaimed the minstrel who had introduced himself as Eldenoix.

The Grand Steward gave him a gracious smile, hastily adjusting her costume’s bunny ears before they could tip off her head. “Thank you, I’m quite honored. It was…” A sudden recollection sparked a succession of memories, leaving her speechless for several long seconds. At last, she belatedly continued, “…something I heard from my father. Long, long ago.”

From somewhere across the room, she heard Ivaan Arkwright bitterly mutter, “Corpses don’t bleed.”

* * *

“You’d never believe the tales children are telling in the Undercity these days.”

Ashley gave a start of surprise upon hearing Élodie Fiel’s lilting voice come seemingly from out of nowhere behind him. When he whirled around, it was to find the informations analyst leaning against the wall of the palace munitions building as if she had every right to be there, shrugging a shawl tighter across her shoulders to stave off the autumn chill.

“Let’s hear it, then.”

“This morning, I chanced upon the most _delightful_ ghost story, told by none other than your daughter to a rapt audience of her peers. As I recall, the narrative mostly concerned a lone swordsman fighting off packs of revenants, all the while attempting to break a curse set in motion during the Autumn War.”

“I’d like to see _you_ concoct a bedtime story after being awake forty hours, Élodie.”

She cut him off with a dainty sigh. “It’s better as a silly children’s tale than something grown women and men ought to take seriously. That was your thinking, yes?”

That had not been his thinking. In truth, he had not been thinking at all. Yet he recognized Élodie’s comment for what it was: the means to save face; a bit of generosity between old friends. He offered up a scoff of resignation. “And what, pray tell, did the children of the Undercity think of my daughter’s silly tale?”

“It was… mostly a success. Mostly. Poor Gerald Marbrand was nearly in tears by the end.” Ashley let out a low chuckle. Élodie, too, cracked a smile, closing her eyes to the clouded skies as she continued. “Well. Provided she and her friends continue to spread the story, I should think it won’t be difficult at all to make it seem like nothing more than a faerie tale. Something that sprang into being from the imagination of a child.” The informations analyst turned to meet Ashley’s gaze once more, and there was a mischievous gleam in her dark eyes. “Something to be shown no respect at all.”

**Author's Note:**

> This piece has been revisited, referenced and revised over the years - and that was all before Stormblood’s bard quests touched on its subject matter. It's given me more joy than almost any other I've written during my time playing Final Fantasy XIV, and I hope you've enjoyed reading it, too.
> 
> Some characters who are not mine make cameos, including Ivaan Arkwright, Sylvan Rain, and Eldenoix Aeledfyr.


End file.
